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#Google parent company Alphabet has become the fourth Big Tech group to hit a $4tn market value, fuelled by investor optimism that its #AI models can compete with rivals such as OpenAI.

Alphabet shares closed 1 per cent higher in New York on Monday, after jumping earlier in the day following news of a deal with #Apple that will entail Google’s GeminiAI models powering a revamped version of Siri, the iPhone’s virtual assistant.

The move capped a more than 6 per cent rise in the past month and carried the company over a threshold already surpassed by Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple.

At the start of last year, Alphabet’s shares had been lagging behind the broader AI-driven rally in Big Tech stocks, amid fears its cash-cow search engine would be overshadowed by new apps such as #chatgpt and Perplexity.

Investors were also concerned US regulators were seeking to break up the Silicon Valley-based company.

But the shares have more than doubled since April, as Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, Google’s AI arm, led the group’s effort to make inroads on ChatGPT.

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Google’s parent company Alphabet has become the fourth Big Tech group to hit a $4tn market value, fuelled by investor optimism that its AI models can compete with rivals such as OpenAI.

Alphabet shares closed 1 per cent higher in New York on Monday, after jumping earlier in the day following news of a deal with Apple that will entail Google’s Gemini AI models powering a revamped version of Siri, the iPhone’s virtual assistant.

The move capped a more than 6 per cent rise in the past month and carried the company over a threshold already surpassed by Nvidia, #Microsoft and Apple.

At the start of last year, Alphabet’s shares had been lagging behind the broader AI-driven rally in Big Tech stocks, amid fears its cash-cow search engine would be overshadowed by new apps such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Investors were also concerned US regulators were seeking to break up the Silicon Valley-based company.

But the shares have more than doubled since April, as Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, Google’s AI arm, led the group’s effort to make inroads on ChatGPT.

Google and Apple on Monday said the two companies had “entered into a multiyear collaboration”. Google’s Gemini models and cloud services will “help power future Apple Intelligence features”, including a long-delayed update to Siri that is expected to be released this year.

“After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google’s Al technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users,” the two companies said.

CNBC first reported the deal. Apple had previously worked with OpenAI to incorporate ChatGPT into its Siri assistant, underscoring how Google’s rival has staged a comeback against the start-up.

The latest partnership between the two is not exclusive, as the iPhone maker will continue to partner with OpenAI to use its models.

Apple experienced a faltering rollout of its suite of AI features, which it dubbed “Apple Intelligence” after its launch in June 2024. Those features included integrating ChatGPT into search and writing assistant functions on newer models of the iPhone.

But a widely anticipated AI makeover for Siri was delayed and high-profile departures from its in-house AI team last year compounded investor concerns that the company was falling behind.

In December, former Microsoft executive Amar Subramanya replaced Apple’s longtime AI chief John Giannandrea.

In the meantime, the competition to offer the most advanced AI models has heated up. Last month, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman declared a “code red” over the need to improve its products, after Google released its Gemini 3 model, which is considered to have leapfrogged rivals on industry benchmarks.

At the time, Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google’s AI architect and DeepMind’s chief technology officer, said the Big Tech group had “pushed our performance quite significantly” by training its AI models using Google’s own bespoke chips. The company also said it was integrating its latest AI models into products immediately.

Alphabet shares have also been propelled since it showed investors its advertising revenues were growing strongly despite the threat from chatbot rivals.

The company’s quarterly revenues grew 16 per cent in the third quarter to surpass $100bn for the first time, it said in October, boosted by its booming cloud computing business and YouTube ads. Its Gemini app has grown rapidly to 650mn monthly users.

Investors have also become more bullish on Google’s prospects after US courts signalled they were unwilling to break up the Big Tech group.

Last year, a US federal judge said the Department of Justice’s request for Alphabet to spin off elements of its advertising business would not be “easily enforceable”, despite a court in April finding the company had an illegal monopoly in digital ads.

In a separate DoJ case over Google search, the company was spared from a court order that could have prohibited it from making payments to Apple to distribute its products to its more than 2bn global users. Apple and Google have long maintained a deal under which Google is the default search engine on Apple’s browser.

Hello everyone, good evening. I'm Research Coin Uncle.
This research report, instead of discussing the geopolitical tensions, focuses on a historic 'marriage of the century' in the tech world. On January 12, 2026, Apple and Google officially announced their collaboration. This major strategic shift in AI not only pushed Google's market capitalization past the $4 trillion mark but also revealed how industry leaders consolidate their dominance through 'ecosystem acquisition' in the battle for AI supremacy. For investors, this is not just a change at two companies, but a paradigm shift in AI investment logic for 2026.